My Name is Palestine @ Southern Exposure

Co-curated by Ahmad Alaqra and Leyya Mona Tawil, in collaboration with video artist Mohammad Tatour
Co-Produced by SoEx, Palestinian Museum, and Arab.AMP
Special thanks to Amer Shomali and Valerie Imus!

Music and song have been integral to Palestine's cultural fabric for centuries, evolving through dynamic exchanges with civilisations that have traversed this land. Palestinians sing in a wide range of circumstances, in the fields and in prisons, about harvests and hunger, exile and return, and about refugee camps and homeland, thus transforming singing into a collective practice that reflects the very fabric of society as it moves between private and public spaces.

The أنا إسمي شعب فلسطين “Ana Ismi Shab Falastin” collection was researched and developed by Ahmed Alaqra and The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit) over a period of years. Southern Exposure’s iteration of My Name is Palestine was co-curated by Alaqra and Leyya Mona Tawil for our Bay Area community, in collaboration with video artist Mohammad Tatour. This sound and video work examines the role of music as a cultural and political force within the Palestinian context, with a particular focus on its evolution alongside the liberation movement. Music is situated as both witness and participant in a continuum of resistance, where the act of creation becomes inseparable from the pursuit of justice.

Please join us for the Opening Reception on May 2nd featuring @spiteofdarkness - MIKE KHOURY’S SPITE OF DARKNESS consists of Mike Khoury and Indira Edwards on violin, Ben Hall and Ali Allen Colding on drums. They perform the compositions of Palestinian-American composer Mike Khoury.